‘Weapons’ Director Returns With His Scariest Movie Yet

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Not since John Carpenter has a horror director burst onto the scene like Zach Cregger, whose first two films, Barbarian and the Oscar-winning Weapons , established him as a generational scary-movie talent, and whose third—and best—feature, Resident Evil , solidifies his status as a maestro of monstrous madness.

A PlayStation adaptation that’s at once spiritually faithful to its source material and yet unburdened by demands for across-the-board fidelity—a tack that was also taken by Paul W.

Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s wholly separate six-entry series—Cregger’s latest (Sept.

18, in theaters) is less formally adventurous than his prior behind-the-camera efforts, opting for a pedal-to-the-metal dash into a heart of malevolent darkness.

As hilarious as it is unnerving, it’s the rare video game-based film to rock from breakneck start to insane finish.

Cregger’s Resident Evil pivots around an original franchise protagonist, medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams), who’s introduced dropping off a package at a local hospital.

Trailing behind him to echo the Resident Evil titles’ trademark third-person perspective, Cregger instantly elicits close engagement with Bryan, who’s understandably flustered by the less-than-helpful treatment he receives from doctors and attendants.

Making things more stressful, he’s just ended a testy call with a girlfriend who’s clearly unhappy with him for his lack of enthusiasm about her pregnancy.

On his way out, Bryan is given an out-of-the-blue assignment to deliver very important (mysterious) cargo to a hospital in Raccoon City.

Though that destination is far and it’s snowing outside, the lure of money is enough to entice him to accept.

While navigating an icy road, a moment of distraction leads to calamity when he hits a woman (materializing out of nowhere) with his car.

Exiting the vehicle, Bryan finds that she’s gone, and he’s none too keen on following the bloody tracks leading into the woods.

Muttering to himself about the awfulness of every facet of his ordeal, Abrams is a riot in Resident Evil , serving as an intensely relatable proxy for an audience that, like him, is conversant with horror-movie and video-game conventions.

Over its fleet and ferocious 90 minutes, the film is wink-wink in the finest way possible, nodding to the franchise’s lore (such as the sight of a typewriter on an office desk) and building tension through scenarios that lean into their outrageous danger.